There is Thorn, a shaman himself. He lives to pass down his wisdom and his stories - to teach those who would follow in his footsteps. There is Heather, the healer who, in many ways, holds the clan together. There is Elga, an outsider and the bringer of change. And then there is Loon, the next shaman, who is determined to find his own path. But in a world so treacherous, that journey is never simple - and where it may lead is never certain.

People who bought this also bought...

Aurora

A major new novel from one of science fiction's most powerful voices, Aurora tells the incredible story of our first voyage beyond the solar system. Brilliantly imagined and beautifully told, it is the work of a writer at the height of his powers.

The Years of Rice and Salt

It is the 14th century, and one of the most apocalyptic events in human history is set to occur - the coming of the Black Death. History teaches us that a third of Europe's population was destroyed. But what if the plague had killed 99 percent of the population instead? How would the world have changed? This is a look at the history that could have been - a history that stretches across centuries, a history that sees dynasties and nations rise and crumble, a history that spans horrible famine and magnificent innovation.

Seveneves: A Novel

A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space.

Galileo’s Dream

With Galileo’s Dream, Kim Stanley Robinson crafts an instant masterpiece that blends epic adventure and thoughtful alternate history. Ganymede, a rebellious Jovian, attempts to bring famed scientific mind Galileo forward in time to alter the course of history with astonishing results.

The Wild Shore: The Three Californias Triptych, Book 1

North America, 2047. For the small Pacific Coast community of San Onofre, life in the aftermath of a devastating nuclear attack is a matter of survival, a day-to-day struggle to stay alive. But young Hank Fletcher dreams of the world that might have been, that might yet be - and dreams of playing a crucial role in America's rebirth.

2312

The year is 2312. Scientific and technological advances have opened gateways to an extraordinary future. Earth is no longer humanity's only home; new habitats have been created throughout the solar system on moons, planets, and in between. But in this year, 2312, a sequence of events will force humanity to confront its past, its present, and its future. The first event takes place on Mercury, on the city of Terminator, itself a miracle of engineering on an unprecedented scale. It is an unexpected death, but one that might have been foreseen....

The Gold Coast: The Three Californias Triptych, Book 2

North America, 2027. Southern California is a developer's dream gone mad: an endless sprawl of condos, freeways, and malls. Jim McPherson, the affluent son of a defense contractor, is a young man lost in a world of fast cars, casual sex, and designer drugs. But his descent in to the shadowy underground of industrial terrorism brings him into a shattering confrontation with his family, his goals, and his ideals.

Forty Signs of Rain: Science in the Capital, Book 1

The best-selling author of the classic Mars trilogy and The Years of Rice and Salt returns with a riveting new trilogy of cutting-edge science, international politics, and the real-life ramifications of global warming as they are played out in our nation's capital - and in the daily lives of those at the center of the action. Hauntingly realistic, here is a novel of the near future that is inspired by scientific facts already making headlines. BONUS AUDIO: Includes an exclusive introduction by author Kim Stanley Robinson.

The Water Knife

In the American Southwest, Nevada, Arizona, and California skirmish for dwindling shares of the Colorado River. Into the fray steps Angel Velasquez, detective, leg breaker, assassin, and spy. A Las Vegas water knife, Angel "cuts" water for his boss, Catherine Case, ensuring that her lush, luxurious arcology developments can bloom in the desert, so the rich can stay wet while the poor get nothing but dust.

Red Mars

Winner of the Nebula Award for Best Novel, Red Mars is the first book in Kim Stanley Robinson's best-selling trilogy. Red Mars is praised by scientists for its detailed visions of future technology. It is also hailed by authors and critics for its vivid characters and dramatic conflicts.

For centuries, the red planet has enticed the people of Earth. Now an international group of scientists has colonized Mars. Leaving Earth forever, these 100 people have traveled nine months to reach their new home. This is the remarkable story of the world they create - and the hidden power struggles of those who want to control it.

Blue Mars

The once red and barren terrain of Mars is now green and rich with life - plant, animal, and human. But idyllic Mars is in a state of political upheaval, plagued by violent conflict between those who would keep the planet green and those who want to return it to a desert world.

Green Mars

The initial Martian pioneers had fierce disagreements about how the planet should be used by humans. This led to a war that threatened the lives of billions of people on both Mars and Earth. Now, the second generation of settlers continues the struggle to survive the hostile yet strangely beautiful environment of the red planet.

Sixty Days and Counting: Science in the Capital, Book 3

By the time Phil Chase is elected president, the world's climate is far on its way to irreversible change. Food scarcity, housing shortages, diminishing medical care, and vanishing species are just some of the consequences. The erratic winter the Washington, D.C., area is experiencing is another grim reminder of a global weather pattern gone haywire: bone-chilling cold one day, balmy weather the next. BONUS AUDIO: Includes an exclusive introduction by author Kim Stanley Robinson.

Pacific Edge: The Three Californias Triptych, Book 3

North America, 2065. In a world that has rediscovered harmony with nature, the village of El Modena, California, is an ecotopia in the making. Kevin Claiborne, a young builder who has grown up in this "green" world, now finds himself caught up in the struggle to preserve his community's idyllic way of life from the resurgent forces of greed and exploitation.

The final volume in Kim Stanley Robinson's Three Californias triptych, Pacific Edge is a brilliant work of science fiction and an outstanding literary achievement.

Fifty Degrees Below: Science in the Capital, Book 2

Best-selling, award-winning, author Kim Stanley Robinson continues his groundbreaking trilogy of eco-thrillers - and propels us deeper into the awesome whirlwind of climatic change. Set in our nation's capital, here is a chillingly realistic tale of people caught in the collision of science, technology, and the consequences of global warming - which could trigger another phenomenon: abrupt climate change, resulting in temperatures. BONUS AUDIO: Includes an exclusive introduction by author Kim Stanley Robinson.

The Peripheral

Where Flynne and her brother, Burton, live, jobs outside the drug business are rare. Fortunately, Burton has his veteran's benefits, for neural damage he suffered from implants during his time in the USMC's elite Haptic Recon force. Then one night Burton has to go out, but there's a job he's supposed to do - a job Flynne didn't know he had. Beta-testing part of a new game, he tells her.

Endeavour: Sleeping Gods, Book 1

In 2118 the first daring mission to another star, Tau Ceti - 12 light-years away - is launched. Tom Hites and Harry Cosgrove command the starship Endeavour on an epic journey to solve the Fermi paradox. From the first nearly disastrous steps on a distant world, their quest takes them further than they ever imagined.

Burning Paradise

Cassie Klyne, 19 years old, lives in the United States in the year 2015 - but it's not our United States, and it's not our 2015. Cassies world has been at peace since the Great Armistice of 1918. There was no World War II, no Great Depression. Poverty is declining, prosperity is increasing everywhere; social instability is rare. But Cassie knows the world isn't what it seems. Her parents were part of a group who gradually discovered the awful truth: That for decades - back to the dawn of radio communications - human progress has been interfered with, made more peaceful and benign, by an extraterrestrial entity.

The Three-Body Problem

Set against the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plans to invade Earth. Meanwhile, on Earth, different camps start forming, planning to either welcome the superior beings and help them take over a world seen as corrupt, or to fight against the invasion.

The Affinities

In our rapidly-changing world of "social media", everyday people are more and more able to sort themselves into social groups based on finer and finer criteria. In the near future of Robert Charles Wilson's The Affinities, this process is supercharged by new analytic technologies - genetic, brain-mapping, behavioral.

Dark Eden: A Novel

On the alien, sunless planet they call Eden, the 532 members of the Family shelter beneath the light and warmth of the Forest's lantern trees. Beyond the Forest lie the mountains of the Snowy Dark and a cold so bitter and a night so profound that no man has ever crossed it. The Oldest among the Family recount legends of a world where light came from the sky, where men and women made boats that could cross the stars. These ships brought us here, the Oldest say - and the Family must only wait for the travelers to return.

The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson

Adventurers, scientists, artists, workers, and visionaries - these are the men and women you will encounter in the short fiction of Kim Stanley Robinson. In settings ranging from the sunken ruins of Venice to the upper reaches of the Himalayas to the terraformed surface of Mars itself, and through themes of environmental sustainability, social justice, personal responsibility, sports, adventure, and fun, Robinson's protagonists explore a world which stands in sharp contrast to many of the traditional locales and mores of science fiction, presenting instead a world in which Utopia rests within our grasp.

The Abyss Beyond Dreams: Chronicle of the Fallers, Book 1

The year is 3326. Nigel Sheldon, one of the founders of the Commonwealth, receives a visit from the Raiel - self-appointed guardians of the Void, the enigmatic construct at the core of the galaxy that threatens the existence of all that lives. The Raiel convince Nigel to participate in a desperate scheme to infiltrate the Void. Once inside, Nigel discovers that humans are not the only life-forms to have been sucked into the Void. The humans trapped there are afflicted by an alien species of biological mimics.

Accelerando

The Singularity. It is the era of the posthuman. Artificial intelligences have surpassed the limits of human intellect. Biotechnological beings have rendered people all but extinct. Molecular nanotechnology runs rampant, replicating and reprogramming at will. Contact with extraterrestrial life grows more imminent with each new day.

Publisher's Summary

Audie Award Finalist, Science Fiction, 2014

There is Thorn, a shaman himself. He lives to pass down his wisdom and his stories - to teach those who would follow in his footsteps. There is Heather, the healer who, in many ways, holds the clan together. There is Elga, an outsider and the bringer of change. And then there is Loon, the next shaman, who is determined to find his own path. But in a world so treacherous, that journey is never simple - and where it may lead is never certain.

Shaman is a powerful, thrilling and heart-breaking story of one young man's journey into adulthood - and an awe-inspiring vision of how we lived 30,000 years ago.

For a long time I've been hoping to find a good piece of scholarship dealing with the peoples of the ice age, specifically the people who painted the caves in France and modern-day Europe. I know that there isn't all that much to go on, however, I assumed there would be at least a few people in this field of archaeology, anthropology, and sociology who could at least offer some solid, historical, factual knowledge on what these people were like, how they lived and survived, what they might have possibly believed.

Sadly, I never really found a work of non-fiction that I felt was suitable - either because the time period was too recent (Mesopotamia and the fertile crescent peoples) or the books were new-age, wack-a-doo nonsense with pictures of burning crystals superimposed over photographs of cave paintings.

About ten years ago I picked up a book called Red Mars because someone recommended it to me and I wasn't even 50 pages into it before I went back to the bookstore to buy the sequels Green Mars and Blue Mars. In those books Kim Stanley Robinson embarked on a grand thought experiment concerning colonizing the red planet. His book wasn't filled with any aliens (though the people living on Mars grew quite distant from the people left on poor Earth), and neither was his book filled with any unnecessary action or typically 'science fiction' plot points. The books were clearly written in his simple yet intelligent voice and they dealt simply with people and how they interacted with each other. In fact at times you almost forgot they were even on Mars.

And that was the real key: Robinson is able to draw you into his worlds slowly, carefully, and hardly without you even noticing.

This book is another grand thought experiment, but instead of an alien planet he writes about our own alien planet tens of thousands of years ago when we even lives side by side with our evolutionary ancestors, the Neanderthals. But the book is never strange, it's always about people, a boy named Loon being trained to be a Shaman, and most importantly it's about survival. This is a world where people have to stick together to stay alive but could very well take place even today in the wilds of Siberia, or remotest Canada, or Patagonia because aside from their perspective on how the universe works, they are no different than we are. They love, they fight, they create art, and they die.

In a way Robinson takes away a lot of the romantic mystery of what living during the ice age would be because it really isn't that different from how many people live today. People are people all through history and just because they lived a long time ago does not mean they are some alien species from Mars.

Above all, however, this book is a supreme work of imagination (and I'm sure research, too based on the many people he acknowledges at the end). We can never know what our ancestors were thinking when they crawled into caves and painted on the walls, but we do know that they were good at it and that when people are good at something they probably enjoy doing it, too.

Robinson follows very simple A to B logic in making the story very believable - if you need to tell time, how do you do it without a clock? Or how do you know what ice to step on or avoid? Or how do you treat a wound? Robinson is always turning these simple questions into plot points to advance the story and I get the feeling he had fun trying to think the story through and how the characters would act and survive given such limited tools and knowledge.

As for historical accuracy, well, I can't say how accurate the book is, and I doubt anyone really could, but it feels authentic and that's good enough. The story is very simple, there is no epic battle or major intrigue, and there is really only one major change of location for added drama, but mostly it's about being immersed in a world very different from our own but also very similar to our own - like looking into the eyes of a Neanderthal and seeing a glimpse of ourselves or looking at the beautiful cave paintings and seeing the vast and recognizable reservoir of human talent and ability over the millennia.

This is a wonderful book that while not earth shattering in scope, is quite an achievement in imagination.

Over the years since I read KSR's Mars Trilogy, when I have told others about it, my descriptions of that masterpiece have tended to include the phrases "science fiction, but in a class by itself" and also, "akin to reading history, but written 300 years in the future."

While I have enjoyed other books by KSR, none have been able to measure up to the Mars Trilogy - until now. Shaman, too, is a masterpiece. It is nothing at all like Robinson's other novels, which is a good thing - and testament to the author's abilities.

What makes it so great? First of all, the characters. In Robinson's other works, character development has tended to be something he seems to work at, but perhaps doesn't come naturally to him. With Shaman, his ship has come in. Creating characters who would have lived 30,000 years ago and making them believable is quite an accomplishment. In Robinson's depictions, they are at once Unknowable, mysterious and profoundly ordinary. His use of everyday speech for their dialogue, rather than some wholly imagined, affected "tribespeople" speak (whatever language was spoken 30,000 years ago will likely remain forever completely unknown) is a stroke of brilliance. It's easy for the reader to grasp that the characters are speaking in their own tongue, but with colloquialisms that are synonymic in our language. For example, they might have had an equivalent for "oh, fuck;" or even the quirky meaning behind our present day "mama mia" makes the (single) use that phrase not seem odd, or out of place.

The second bit of greatness, is that these characters, their actions, and the world they inhabit - both Natural and Spirit - come truly alive. Never again will I look at an ancient cave painting or other ancient art in quite the same way. In Shaman, by books end, Robinson has created an emotionally charged, believable bridge between those artistic creations, their makers and the present moment. This achievement by Robinson is no less than High Art itself. He's created Magic, in which the past is brought to life; for this reader, I am forever changed for the experience.

I admit, I almost didn't finish listening to Shaman. The first third of the book is very slow-going. Hours of description, both of the exterior world and Loon's thoughts about his environment and his body (ahem), almost defeated me. It was kind of like hanging around a thirteen year-old who has one topic of discussion: him or herself. For hours.

But, I slogged on and by the break between parts one and two, you couldn't have pried my iPod out of my clutching fingers. I was hooked. This is not a fast read, but it is good - if you can make it that far.

Highly recommended to all my friends who are lovers of the written and spoken word, of ancient human and art history, contemporary visual arts--also anyone who simply enjoys an adventure story.

What other book might you compare Shaman to and why?

I read Robinson's Mars trilogy and enjoyed those books very much, but although that was years ago so hard to compare, I felt this book more deeply. Part of reason for this may be that I am a painter, as is the protagonist of the story, and I really identified with the descriptions of his creative process.

Which character – as performed by Graeme Malcolm – was your favorite?

I especially liked Graeme Malcolm's performance of the herb woman, Heather. Male narrators aren't always successful in creating a female voice free of caricature or condescension. Malcolm gives us a cranky, tough old woman full of complaints and bitterness who shines with intelligence, curiosity and generosity.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

The reader's performance was wonderful, his thoughtful and understated reading afforded plenty of space for my own emotional responses. Many moments were deeply felt, I cried more than once. The first time was early in the story, when Loon is starting his initiatory walkabout, a description of the thoughts running through his mind which the reader performs in an almost casual tone, almost but not quite tossed off, a series of questions ending the wonder--why do people die?

Any additional comments?

I've been interested in paleontology since receiving a beautiful picture book about prehistoric people as a child. I've often felt I could feel quite at home if I were somehow transported back to the stone age. So I really eat up stories and images of this time. Recently, I watched Werner Herzog's fantastic film Cave of Forgotten Dreams, which shows some of the places and things described in this story. After reading Shaman I feel more than ever a kinship with the ancestors who lived and created in those faraway times.

Not a 5 star, but a solid, thoughtful 4 star. Away from the book, I found myself thinking about how it would be to live as a human so exposed to the brutalities of nature. This to me is a big factor in how I measure the value of a book or a story----does it make me think a little bit differently, does it transport me to a different world in my imagination?

This book did. I think it would be enjoyed by anyone who enjoys speculative fiction. (Sci-fi, etc.) Compared to most in those genres, this is superior writing.

I had almost given up on Kim Stanley Robinson. Although I love the Mars Trilogy (warts and all), his subsequent work seems to have degenerated as his brilliant ideas are too often let down by plotless pontificating and lengthy passages that read as though he is typing up his research notes. After the execrable disappointment of "2312", I had sworn off him.

But the good reviews of Shaman made me take a risk - and it is indeed wonderful, one of the best things Robinson's done in a long time. Although this is not a book with a lot of plot, and much of the writing is clearly based on immense amounts of research, the structure is clear and focused, and the descriptive writing is always clearly tied to developing the relationships between the characters. The novel plunges you into an alien world and all the myriad details serve toward making that world feel intensely real. And the central relationship of Loon and Thorn is a sensitive and moving depiction of the value of passing on knowledge.

Having read other attempts at depicting this period - "Clan of the Cave Bear" and "The Inheritors", I found this one by far the most convincing and absorbing. I particularly liked the way Robinson rendered the Neanderthal character - he's succeeded in creating a figure that is intelligent and humane and yet not *quite* human.

I recommend that readers watch Werner Herzog's documentary "Cave of Forgotten Dreams" before reading, as the book is clearly inspired by it and it will enrich the cave-painting scenes.

The narrator is so good and makes the novel flow so effortlessly that I cannot thing of anything to say about him - the highest compliment possible!

Your report has been received. It will be reviewed by Audible and we will take appropriate action.

Can't wait to hear more from this listener?

You can now follow your favorite reviewers on Audible.

When you follow another listener, we'll highlight the books they review, and even email* you a copy of any new reviews they write. You can un-follow a listener at any time to stop receiving their updates.

* If you already opted out of emails from Audible you will still get review emails by the listeners you follow.